


finally, I can see you crystal clear

by LieutenantIvant



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hatesex, Hera is trying to work through things, Thrawn is terrible at feelings, but it gets less hatey as it goes along
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:42:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25037191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantIvant/pseuds/LieutenantIvant
Summary: Hera and Thrawn encounter each other again after the events of Jedi Night. Why did Thrawn feel the need to bring up Hera's late brother? An angry Hera would very much like to know that too, while Thrawn learns that knowing one's enemy can backfire in unexpected ways.
Relationships: Hera Syndulla/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

Power cuts had been a feature of her childhood in a rural dwelling on a planet prone to dust storms, but even though Hera Syndulla is accustomed to them, she has never had more reason to curse one, with the current one forcing her to remain trapped in a room with the greatest existential threat to the rebellion, and her hated enemy, Grand Admiral Thrawn. Technology had its drawbacks, for here they were, currently unable to open doors which operated via electrical panels. On the bright side, the emergency lights have been triggered, so they aren't fumbling around in darkness. Or near-darkness, in this case – Thrawn’s red eyes literally did glow, it turned out. Her mind hadn’t been imagining things or finding ways to make him more intimidating than he already was.

It has been a month since she’d been rescued from captivity on Lothal. A month since Kanan’s death, a loss she would always carry with her, like she already did with so many before him. But she hasn’t forgotten the smaller traumas of that dreadful day, including the ones inflicted by the man currently observing her in silence. Hera had managed to complete the more important half of her mission here, before realising she was being tracked, and by the one person she desperately wanted to avoid. She'd come into the basement of an unobtrusive office building hoping to hide until she could figure out a plan to escape. But she should have known better. Thrawn was always going to find her.

And he was never going to leave her be. Hera jumps at the sound of Thrawn’s voice coming from across the room.

“General Syndulla, I believe we still have a conversation about your Kalikori to finish.” 

“I have no desire to converse with you about the weather, much less anything important to me, given the lack of respect you showed for my Kalikori back on Lothal.” snaps Hera. “Is leaving something you covet lying around your idea of showing appreciation?”

“I assure you my intention was not to disparage your heritage. I was summoned very abruptly to Coruscant and could not return to reclaim it –“ 

Hera laughs incredulously. 

“You expect me to believe that after you asked me about my dead brother while your colleague Governor Pryce tortured me for fun? That it wasn’t to add insult to injury?” 

Thrawn grimaces. He has accepted the unpleasant necessity of Imperial interrogation methods and will not apologise for trying to extract vital information from her, but inwardly, he will admit that Pryce’s visible delight in inflicting pain on the Twi’lek rebel for no productive reason had disturbed him. “The detail on that particular block on your Kalikori drew my attention because…” he hesitated briefly before bringing up something he’d tried not to think about for years now. “I too have lost a brother. We share the same loss, Hera Syndulla.” 

Hera’s eyes narrow. The manipulative bastard. She doesn’t believe for one minute that’s true. This is some new cunning tactic, a new low, to try and soften her up after the electrocution session and probe droid couldn’t. But she decided to play along for now. 

“I’m sorry. I hope he wasn't anything like you.”

A half-smile twists Thrawn’s mouth. “We were both remarkably stubborn in our own ways, but other than that, no, he wasn't. He was a politician, I was a military officer deemed almost irredeemably reckless by our people’s standards. Our personalities suited our roles. He spent most of his time as an important representative of our family trying to keep me out of trouble with those in power, despite being 3 years younger than me.”

Hera is fascinated despite herself, and there are echoes of affection she hears in the inflection of his voice that she thinks even Thrawn can’t feign.

“I assume he didn’t succeed?” Hera says dryly.

“I was exiled after he was lost, so no, I would say he did an extraordinarily difficult job extremely well.” 

Hera’s eyebrows shoot up at hearing Thrawn was exiled, but she tamps down the curiosity tugging at her brain like an overeager lothcat; she's not here to listen to his life story. “You say he was lost, not dead?” 

“I say lost, because he disappeared during a...mission to protect our people's space from a potential threat, and I was never able to discern what happened to him, but it is a certainty that he is dead; my brother was not someone to abandon his responsibilities and cease all contact for no apparent reason.” Thrawn’s forehead ridges knit in a frown; it’s apparent that his brother’s death and the opaqueness of the circumstances surrounding it still trouble him. Hera almost feels sorry for him. Almost. 

“How did your brother die?” asks Thrawn suddenly. 

The bright green glow in General Syndulla's eyes, though not of the same luminosity as the light behind his own crimson pair, is dulled. A part of him hates to see it, but nonetheless it’s not enough for him to rein in his relentless curiosity, sparked by a long unresolved tragedy from his own past. He wants to know, he must know what happened to her brother, because he will never know what happened to his. 

Hera takes a deep breath. He doesn't deserve to be told. She shouldn't give him parts of her life he can hold over her head and use to gain a psychological advantage over her. Thrawn's obsession with her history feels more disturbingly intimate than the usual intelligence gathering one would expect from an enemy, and with him, it feels as if to let him know her is to let him claim her. But as much as it shames her to admit it, he's well and truly under her skin, and he's been there maybe even since their first meeting. It's more than just the silky voice oozing genteel politeness that makes her lekku twitch and loins throb involuntarily, it's that he is, like her, an alien. He must have faced the same prejudice and persecution she has from Imperials, but facing the additional burden of resentment, and he chooses to help them crush her people and others. Hera can understand why some people choose to serve or bow down to this monstrous regime, but not him, and it drives her to try and break that courteous, cool façade and make him see just what it is he’s enforcing on the galaxy. And knowing he’s lost a brother too, the story of how her baby brother died might just do that. Surely not even he can justify such gratuitous cruelty. 

"You once asked me what I thought of the Imperial occupation on Ryloth. Let me ask you a question. Do you know what Bybbec fever is?” asks Hera, challengingly. 

“It’s an unpleasant but mild illness for most beings, but for Twi’leks I believe it can be fatal if it’s not treated.” Thrawn raises an eyebrow. “I understand the Empire provides the remedy free of charge to the local population on Ryloth.” 

Hera snorts. “The Empire does nothing for free, or out of generosity. The provision comes with a cost –all who request supplies of garris-root extract to cure the illness from the Imperial-run clinics must register with them. It was a system designed to track potential troublemakers, root out the use of false identities and make the formation of underground resistance movements impossible.” 

Thrawn smiles sardonically. “And yet, it does not appear to have succeeded, given your father continues to lead the Free Ryloth Movement to this day.” 

“Not for lack of trying. My brother fell ill with Bybbec fever, and my father went to one of these clinics to obtain the remedy. His name must have set off an alarm on their records. After all, he was famous for his victories against the Separatists during the Clone Wars and the officials obviously thought he was trouble waiting to happen. They evidently decided that the best way to ensure his compliance with the occupation,” Hera pauses, bitterness mounting, “was to cause my brother to die of Bybbec fever in an attempt to break my father’s spirit, make him feel powerless in the face of their control.” 

The only time Hera has seen a smile disappear from Thrawn’s face this swiftly was when the Bendu made his appearance on Atollon. Suddenly, she’s not sure she wants what she was looking for from him at all. She finds herself having to look away as she revisits memories that still hurt and enrage her decades later. 

“The Imperials tracked my father back to our house, and their commander ordered all the garris-root extract seized, and then had it all burned in front of us, rendering it useless as medicine,” Hera says, throat tightening with remembered grief and rage. “The fever was already so far along in Lemo – that – that was my brother’s name.” Hera swallows, trying to keep her emotions in check. She was just a child when Lemo died, her mother had been killed soon after and she hadn’t been on the kind of terms with Cham where she would have felt comfortable talking about him, so Lemo's name on her tongue now feels unfamiliar, heavy, and strange. She tries to shake off the guilt engendered by these feelings. ”There was no time to obtain or steal any more of it. My father is the proudest of the proud. I had never seen him beg for anything before, and I’ll never see it again. But that day…he would have done anything to save his child, and the Imperial officials used his desperation to humiliate him.”

Thrawn’s face is hard to read, but it seems to Hera that his eyes have widened and his lips have thinned, indicating that he doesn’t like what he’s hearing. Good. Why should she be the only uncomfortable one here?

“If you ever wondered why, on Atollon, I wouldn’t surrender even as you threatened to kill my friends, it’s because I learned the hard way that for the Empire, cruelty is the point. Even if you do nothing wrong, they’ll hurt or kill you anyway. So for me, there’s never been any option but to stand against it.” Hera looks him in the eye defiantly. “That’s why I fight. Not because war is in my blood, or whatever it was you said. Your analysis of me has always been flawed, Admiral.”

Thrawn remains silent. Hera’s anger grows. 

"Your brother was a grown man with a choice over his destiny. Mine was just a little boy. A baby, who'd never had a chance to rebel against his parents, let alone the Empire. I’ve also lost a mother, and a –“ Hera hesitates, for some reason unwilling to reveal the true nature of her and Kanan’s relationship, unaware that Thrawn already knew - “a close friend. Our personal losses are not the same, Thrawn.”

Thrawn finds himself at a loss for words. What, after all, can he say? What the Imperials on Ryloth had done to the Syndullas was not only cruel but stupid, unjustifiable on either moral or tactical grounds, guaranteeing the very rebellion they were attempting to pre-empt. But he had asked for this story, knowing it would open an old wound, and he owes her something for it. Ironically, this is a situation made for Thrass, the master of pouring oil on troubled waters that had usually been churned up by Thrawn back then too. He would have known what to tell her. 

“You’ve lost more in your life already than anyone should have. I cannot say I regret your Jedi’s death beyond the fact it did more harm than good to my TIE Defender project – he was a warrior and, like you, he knew the risks of rebelling against the Empire. But your brother’s death was cruel and unnecessary, and I would that your family had not had to suffer it.”

The sympathy in Thrawn’s voice is somehow worse than the mockery from his previous false apologies, the mention of Kanan a particular sting, and Hera suddenly wants nothing more than to shut him up, make him stop talking, cut off the empathy she thought would be a way of weakening him but now finds unbearable. So she does shut him up, in the only way she can think of.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hera's anger at Thrawn, Thrawn's obsession with Hera, and their mutual emotional turmoil leads to its inevitable conclusion.

Hera kisses Thrawn aggressively, parting his lips and sliding her tongue alongside his, proving that she too can be insistent, invasive and relentless if she wishes. And that she can catch him by surprise, it turns out. Thrawn is for once off-balance, abruptly placed in a situation he would never have anticipated. But he’s a master of adapting his tactics to suit the unexpected, and he kisses her back with equal intensity, runs his hands over her flight suit, seeking out curves and sensitive areas to touch and fastenings to undo. It’s not long before she in turn is grasping at his admiral’s coat, trying to pull it apart and get to the lean, toned muscles underneath. She’s never seen them herself, but Kallus has told her about Thrawn’s training sessions with assassin droids, and memories of the grudging admiration in his voice as he spoke of the Grand Admiral’s combat skills and his musculature piques her curiosity…and her desire. Once they’ve undressed, they fall to the floor, kissing and grabbing at each other, with Thrawn on top. As usual, Hera mentally adds in annoyance, though her growing excitement drains the thought of any real bitterness.

Thrawn's touch is reverent, worshipful even, but to Hera it evokes a collector handling a long sought jewel of the greatest rarity and beauty, not a warm, vital being desiring a close physical union with another. Yet Hera finds she doesn't resent it in the slightest. In fact she prefers it this way - having anyone, let alone her greatest enemy take emotionally resonant liberties with her body would be intolerable so soon after the loss of Kanan. She's aware that Thrawn's exploiting yet more knowledge of her people from the way his fingers caress and tease each lek before he takes the tip of one into his mouth, triggering a gasp from her; for all that the galaxy sexualises Twi'lek women, very few people in it bother to understand the erogenous physiological quirks in their famous headtails. Another act of his that would infuriate her at any other time, but in this situation, she appreciates.

She has to work hard to maintain her detachment when she feels Thrawn enter her. A hot coil of pleasure begins to unwind from the depths of her intimate regions as his cock moves within her, his hands lay claim to vast swathes of her body and his lips press increasingly deep, wet kisses against the hollow of her throat, all at the same maddeningly slow pace. Hera cannot suppress the moan that escapes her, but she refuses to beg for more; she's had to concede too much to Thrawn already in their more literal battles. In this moment, she will make him surrender to her.

Thrawn’s never had time for attachments. He’s been single-mindedly focused on the destiny he always believed was his, to be the protector and saviour of his people, from the moment he became aware that his intellectual abilities and willingness to do what was necessary marked him out from the rest of his fellow Chiss; nothing else matters but the fulfilment of that goal. But with the ghost of Thrass newly restless in his mind, and having very recently had to bid farewell to Eli Vanto again – a cool, formal, utterly insufficient farewell - has left Thrawn unusually vulnerable. Why else would he be breaking his own maxims for being an effective warrior by not only understanding his adversary, but strongly identifying with her motivation and her pain? Even so, he thinks that this alone would not have been enough to derail what had previously been merely a professional interest in General Syndulla, and brought on this sudden need for closeness with another person who he believes might understand him.

There is, in theory, little chance of that here. Hera Syndulla despises him; he can hear it in her voice as she spoke of her brother and her family’s devastation, see it in her averted eyes as he thrusts in and out of her, and feel it in the fierceness with which her fingers dig into his back as she approaches her climax. But nonetheless, there's a strange kind of acceptance he hasn't felt in a very long time that he finds in her embrace, that of being seen as a person, not the ultimate military asset, and it intensifies when Syndulla moans beneath him (he can’t remember the last time he was a source of genuine pleasure for anyone). Thrawn considers himself to be a supreme realist and pragmatist: it's how he rationalises that serving the Empire on his people's behalf remains the greater good, despite the growing evidence before him that it places no value whatsoever on any form of life, but right here, right now, he wishes things were different. Wishes that the two of them were not on opposite sides of a war. Wishes the darker parts of him, which he knows have surfaced since Vanto left for the Ascendancy – perhaps because he left –had remained dormant. Wishes he could truly have all of Hera, not just her body.

Syndulla must have sensed this momentary weakness, for suddenly he’s looking up at her, having been flipped onto his back while his mind was on that atypically maudlin journey. She straddles him, lekku swaying sensually above his head, her small but perfectly round breasts bouncing slightly, as she lowers and raises herself rapidly now, eyes closed from the satisfaction of being entirely in control. No work of art could come close to capturing the beauty of the sight before him or the physical sensations he’s experiencing, and Thrawn realises he now has the final piece of the puzzle that explains why he’s doing this. Moments later, Syndulla lays the length of her body against his and claims his mouth with hers, sharply biting down on his bottom lip, and they come almost simultaneously, each using the kiss to stifle their groans.

There’s no afterglow. Once she’s come down from her high, Hera detangles herself from Thrawn as quickly as she can. She’s almost ashamed of how easy she had found it to have sex with him. At least she’d been able to keep her distance and the act itself casual…mostly. There’d been a brief, unnerving moment when his eyes had given her an unexpected glimpse of the man under the Imperial uniform. The contrast between the glowing red eyes and the cool blue skin had always intrigued Hera despite her dislike of him until now, when she’d seen in their depths a profound loneliness and something that could have been sadness; triggering a realisation that this, she, was filling more than a physical need for him, and she’d felt herself responding to it…and immediately acted to squash the threat of an emotional connection by seizing physical control of their sexual one. She’d succeeded in her intent to shatter his composure, and she’d gotten more than she bargained for.

They both dress hastily, and as they do so the power returns to the building, meaning they can now leave. Thrawn makes it clear he has no intention of taking her in...for now, for which Hera’s thankful. There’s enough awkwardness in the air as it is without having to spend several post-coital hours in each other’s company now. They both have conflicting feelings that it’s going to take time to sort out – this is something that shouldn’t have happened, and something they both do and don’t want to happen again. For Hera, that momentary danger of feeling something other than hatred for her enemy is too dangerous to permit again, and Thrawn can’t afford to be distracted from or imperil what remains his overriding goal: to protect his people against a threat greater than the Empire at all costs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so that happened. They're both a bit in denial during and after, I think.
> 
> Anyway do please comment and give me your thoughts - this is the first sex scene I've written and it was quite hard going, so I hope I've done it well.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, that was some emotionally heavy stuff. Thrawn is deep down a total mess that can't/won't admit to it, while Hera is able to process her grief in a healthy and open way and channel it for good. 
> 
> I've named Hera's brother Lemo - I still think it's ridiculous that Rebels gave us whole scenes/episodes revolving around Hera's mother and brother and didn't bother to give either of them names. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think! The next chapter is going to, uh, really turn the temperature up.


End file.
